The sub text of the dowry practice

The recent unfortunate incident has everyone standing up with a torch directed towards the practice of dowry in one particular marriage. But whats interesting is its definitely not new to our society and hence this new sense of appallment is quite frankly unnerving. There are 2 aspects here: the indirect male superiority involved here and the mental health awareness conversation. The women in our country have been bringing this to the society s attention for ages now but it was swept under the carpet as a 'gift to the girl'. The problem here is not the gift but the fact that it is a pre-wedding agreement. Its not a gift when you quite literally enter a handahake contract on what material things you would be giving to the other party as part of of the marital proceedings. Both the parties are fully at fault here. Blame is equally on both sides. The girl as is the general norm in our society is left out of the conversation. Her role is to show up for the wedding. The groom on the other hand again as is the general trend in the society is fully included in converstions. Because.. guy? Anyways thats a different blog all together. But the problem here is the absolute disregard to women and her words at every stage. So after all these unfortunate events and the girls parents claim to be the victims. Not fair. The only victim is the poor girl who put up with so much. And girls all over pls stop carrying the term 'family pride' as if its ever served any use. Family pride is basically not being social gossip. But again who cares. The groom s family at most Indian settings have a silent air of superiority. This is just years and years of accpeting an opinion to be a fact. It is not easy to change our ways no doubt. But the one thing we should collectively do is stop silencing the women who question. There are very few of them. But pls stop silencing them. They re doing us all a favor.

Now for the second most imprtant aspect in this deeply saddening incident- Mental health awareness. As a society we definitely need large scale measures to take care of our mental health. This is something i bring up in most of my conversations with most people but its never hit home i feel. And if this is the plight in educated and moderately privileged circles, making a dent at the society level is still a far way to go. But the deficiencies in our mental health measures are fast catching up. One side we see many cases of deciding to take the self harming measure for both serious and minor problems. Both are equally tragic. Its just plain sad. Other side is the extreme actions of people who want to cause others harm. Mental health and emotional regulation should be the bigger conversation here. But how do we talk? Who do we talk to? And is talking enough? Shouldnt there be actions at the society administration levels?